Mexican drug cartels: ‘The most serious threat the US has faced from organized crime’

Mexican drug cartels — the same groups credited with taking tens of thousands of innocent lives through brutal murders during the last few years — have infiltrated the United States.

In an exposé published by The Associated Press this week,
reporter Michael Tarm cites an extensive review of federal court
cases, government drug-enforcement data and interviews with top law
enforcement officials to back up the claim that violent drug lords
from south of the border have established bases within the US that
are now working as remote hubs for international narcotics
rings.

These groups, writes Tarm, once rarely journeyed out of Mexico
or, if that, far beyond the nation’s border with the US. In recent
years, however, Mexican cartels like the infamous Zetas have
extended their reach into the US by literally deploying entire
units to oversee domestic operations.

It isn’t amateur drug mules or wannabe gangsters that are being
sent abroad either. The AP says some of the most trusted agents
aligned with Mexican drug militias now operate out of the US “to
tighten their grip on the world's most lucrative narcotics market
and maximize profits.”

Should the expansion continue at its current rate, US
authorities warn that it could eventually become harder if not
impossible to extradite the cartels to outside of the US. Soon,
says Tarm, drug smugglers may expand into other ventures, like
prostitution, kidnapping-and-extortion rackets and even money
laundering.

"It's probably the most serious threat the United States has
faced from organized crime," Jack Riley of the US Drug
Enforcement Administration explains to the AP.

Southern California, Texas and Arizona aren’t the new homes of
these groups, either. Nine non-border states across the US now have
a documented Mexican cartel presence, with the AP claiming that
these collectives have expanded as far north as Pennsylvania,
roughly 1,500 miles away.

In Chicago, Illinois, the cartels have even become the new
kings. In the Windy City, the Chicago Crime Commission now
considers Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the leader of the Sinaloa
cartel, as Public Enemy No. 1 — the same title once bestowed on
gangster kingpin Al Capone. Unlike his prohibition era counterpart,
though, Guzman has never once set foot in the eastern Illinois
town.

"People think, 'The border's 1,700 miles away. This isn't our
problem.' Well, it is. These days, we operate as if Chicago is on
the border,” Riley tells the AP.

But if geographical boundaries no longer apply in terms of the
growing drug trade, will the same trends found in Mexico make their
way up north too? The Houston Chronicle reported over the weekend
that 3,000 drug-cartel murders have been carried during just the
first 100 days since the country's president, Enrique Peña Nieto,
took office in December. And since 2006, the death toll is thought
to exceed 70,000 — or nearly 20 times more than NATO combat deaths
in Afghanistan, adds the paper.

As recently as last Friday, seven people were killed in Ciudad
Juarez, Mexico after a gunman opened fire in a bar using an AK-45
assault rifle.

"It has not been determined whether the attack is connected
to drug trafficking, but by the type of weapon involved, it is to
be assumed," police spokesman Carlos Gonzalez told Reuters.

But given the documented expansion of the drug gangs into
locales like Chicago — where crime states have skyrocketed in
recent months — the surge in cartel presence in the US is likely
already being accompanied by a wave of violence as well. The Texas
Department of Public Safety cites 22 killings and five kidnappings
in Texas due to cartel activity from 2010 through mid- 2011, but as
gangs penetrate further into the mainland, those numbers are
expected to only grow.